Siemens S65 is a very long expected business phone; number 1 of the German producer. It's earnest and conservative. S65 is heavily loaded with the functions, featuring an integrated megapixel camera and a memory card slot.

Siemens S65 stands among the three most expected mobile phones of the last half a year, besides Nokia 6230 and Sony Ericsson K700. And it will be still these three mobiles, if the producers won't introduce some other earthshaking model. The Siemens expectancy is very strong also due to the fact that we've been waiting for a new highest class model very long - the previous model Siemens S55 came to the market year and a half ago.

While Nokia and Sony Ericsson models attract mainly with multimedia and entertaining functions, Siemens goes a different way. S65 is primarily a phone for business: earnest and conservative, you won't find much entertainment there. It's not a proper phone for people who appreciate e.g. wide choice of music functions but on the other hand there are many people who are looking for a business phone and which explicitly reject the multimedia and entertaining functions of the phone.

It's not an outdoor phone, but it looks nice

Anyway, Siemens S65 is not a real killjoy; it features an integrated megapixel camera.

Design: from scratch

Siemens phones are recognizable at first sight. Designers are mainly using old concepts, slightly enriched with some modern components. Siemens S65 seems redesigned from scratch; I don't see any influence of the older model concepts. The phone presents an elegant combination of a bright and black design with dark (inversive) graphic themes on the display.

Front view

The rear phone surface of is all silver; dark components prevail on the front. The phone is made of plastic; both handsets that I had were absolutely solid. No creaks, no squeaks.

Elegant in all aspects

Siemens S65 is very thin which makes it look smaller, although with its height and width it ranks among bigger phones.

Compared to Nokia 7610

As you can see on the picture with Nokia 7610 model, there is not such a big difference in size; and Nokia is a Symbian smartphone. But don't worry, size of 109 x 48 x 18 mm is normal and Siemens S65 will get into every pocket. Weight of 98 grams is also slightly above the average but it's not necessary to be criticized for that.

The phone is big just right; fits well in the hand

Let's compare competing phones by their size and weight:

Phone

Size

Front surface

Weight

Siemens S65

109 × 48 × 18 mm

52,32 cm2

98 g

Motorola E398

108 × 46 × 21 mm

49,68 cm2

110 g

Nokia 6230

103 × 44 × 20 mm

45,32 cm2

97 g

Sony Ericsson K700i

99 × 47 × 20 mm

46,53 cm2

93 g

The handset is bar shaped; its bottom part is narrowing a bit from a frontal view - but less than the decorative slats among the key columns indicate. Edges are just slightly rounded in contrast to the noticeably rounded handset head.

Display: really big

The display is dominant, same as with other models from the 65 series: CX65 and M65. It features surface of thirteen square centimeters and there is not many regular phones with a bigger display. I've made a summary of similar handsets:

Phone

Display size

Display resolution

Density

Siemens S65

31 × 42 mm

132 × 176

1 784 pixels/cm2

Motorola E398

30 × 37 mm

176 × 220

3 488 pixels/cm2

Nokia 6230

27 × 27 mm

128 × 128

2 247 pixels/cm2

Sony Ericsson K700i

29 × 36 mm

176 × 220

3 709 pixels/cm2

Siemens S65 features the largest display from all these phones but what Motorola E398 or Sony Ericsson K700i can display in width, Siemens S65 can display only on height. Only Nokia 6230 features worse resolution but it's compensated with its small display. Last column in the table shows how many pixels go on a square centimeter of the display and here Siemens S65 is far behind the other compared phones.

Large display is dominant on the front side.

The display is simply rough and it's evident also at a glimpse. It doesn't really matter with font, which is clear and big enough. The problem comes up with graphics, e. g. icons of the main menu or pictures. Lower resolution decreases attractiveness of Siemens S65, even though it's not "service affecting", but notable when you compare it with the new Sony Ericsson K700, higher class Motorola or Samsung mobiles. Siemens already used a poor display for its older S55 model. Despite that S65 model features an incomparably better display, it's still not winning our praise (let's hope that Siemens is going to introduce an enhanced successor earlier than in two years).

Icons are a bit notched on the rough display

The display is active, displays up to 65k colors and is the same as with Siemens M65 and CX65 models. It has efficient illumination and you can look at it from acceptably wide angle. Reflexive background and inverse graphic themes help on the daylight; the display is sufficiently clear.